


Transfusion

by darknessfactor



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Void Avatar!Jessamine, set during first game, this is completely self-indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 07:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12206733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darknessfactor/pseuds/darknessfactor
Summary: The world takes up so much of her that it’s hard to make room for emotion.  Or maybe it’s hard to feel anything other than regret - regret that this couldn’t have been prevented, or regret that she can’t do anything more to save anyone.  She cannot remember how she died, but she remembers who killed her.  She cannot remember her name, but she can remember the name of her daughter.





	Transfusion

**Author's Note:**

> I have wanted to write this fic since I played the first game. I've wanted to write it SO MUCH.

_Do not go gentle into that good night,  
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. _

She would not call it an awakening - not exactly.  More like a creeping awareness, a knowledge that seeps into her head.  It is both too much and too little at the same time.  She wants to reach for it as much as she wants to shy away.

There is a mother, somewhere in the underworld of Dunwall.  She cries over the body of her child, wiping away the bloody rivulets on his cheeks.  In Karnaca, an engaged couple dances, both unaware that the other is dreading their impending marriage.  In Tyvia, an old man gives the last of his bread to his granddaughter, who takes it with shaking hands, all too aware of what he is sacrificing.  In Morley, a man plans revenge for the death of his brother.

Revenge.  Death.  Those concepts are familiar, but the Empress feels detached from them.

She cannot remember.  She cannot - where is she?  It’s dark, and it’s cold, and though she can see and hear everyone in the entire world, she is alone.  

The Empress hears Emily’s sniffles.  The Golden Cat brothel.  Her daughter is crying.  She also hears Corvo.  He’s screaming.

She aches to help them - to appear before them, and stop their pain.  In the end, the act nearly tearing her heart in two, the Empress somehow wills herself into the world, crouching in front of her daughter.

“Emily,” she whispers.  She does not hear how her voice is distorted.

Emily looks at her and screams.

* * *

 

“You’re not real!” Hiram Burrows shouts in his dreams.  “You’re not real, you _aren’t_!”

The Empress has not actually spoken to him.  She doesn’t need to.  For the moment, the hatred in her gut is settled by seeing him thrash, struggling to get away from her.  He has nowhere to run in his nightmares, and he cannot escape her gaze no matter how much he tries to hide.  

He is having Corvo tortured.  It seems only fair.

In the dreams of her former spymaster, they are on a barren island in the midst of blue nothingness.  The whales croon to her, but to Burrows their music is nothing but a cacophony of uneasy sounds.  Gravity does not apply to her here, or maybe she’s just forgotten the kind of effect it’s supposed to have, and so she drifts slightly as she stares.

They’re all dying.  Everyone she tried to save.  They’re dying, their insides dissolving as the plague takes effect.  She can hear the cries of men and women, children and the elderly, all hoping that someone will save them one day.  She has shown herself to a few, only to have them shy away, their pleas for help quickly rescinded.

Some think her a ghost, coming to haunt them.  Others know better and whisper the strictures to themselves, shaking in fear.  There is one boy, with eyes the same color as Emily’s, who looks at her and reaches out to her, his hand nearly touching hers when his eyes turned glassy and blank.

Burrows is the reason for many of the horrors she’s been made to witness.  She knows this now.  It’s almost impossible not to hear his dark, desperate thoughts, as he quickly comes to fear the plague he engineered.  

He can afford to suffer in his sleep.

* * *

 

There is an old woman, living near Clavering Boulevard.  She is being harassed by members of the Bottle Street Gang.  The Empress watches as she locks her door, mumbling to herself, and goes back to the kitchen.  Eventually the gang members leave, and the old woman straightens her spine, her sightless gaze fixing on the Empress.

“Hello dear,” she says.  “You’re not my black-eyed groom.  Though you smell like him.”

The Empress can hear the whispers in the minds of the Bottle Street Gang.  ‘Granny Rags’, they think, and ‘witch’.

Granny Rags - who is Vera Moray who is someone that the Empress isn’t sure she would want to meet, if she were still human - smiles.  “I made something for him, a while ago.  But I think you’ll like it too, dearie.  It’s just out back if you want to take a look.”

It’s a small shrine, erected using ratty purple fabric and wooden stakes.  The whalebone that sits on top resonates with the Empress, though she cannot touch it.  She knows that Granny has followed her outside, and is watching her examine it.  

“Stay a while, won’t you dear?” she asks.  “I haven’t had anyone to talk to lately.”

It has been so long since anyone said anything other than words laced with terror.  The Empress stays.

* * *

 

Corvo is in pain, has a fever, and thinks that she’s a hallucination.  The Empress crouches in front of him and takes one of his hands in her own, wishing she could soothe the places where his fingernails have been ripped off.  He’s murmuring a word that she doesn’t recognize, gripping her hand like he’s afraid that she’ll dissolve into nothing.  It’s not an unreasonable fear; sooner or later, she’s going to go back to watching Emily, who is curled in a ball in her room at the Golden Cat.

This is the first time she’s touched someone.  She can’t feel his warmth.  She presses her lips to his hand anyway, making him shiver.

* * *

 

The world takes up so much of her that it’s hard to make room for emotion.  Or maybe it’s hard to feel anything other than regret - regret that this couldn’t have been prevented, or regret that she can’t do anything more to save anyone.  She cannot remember how she died, but she remembers who killed her.  She cannot remember her name, but she can remember the name of her daughter.

She can remember the name of her sister.

It doesn’t take her long to notice Delilah Copperspoon (Kaldwin), isolated as she is at the Brigmore Manor.  The Empress walks among the women that Delilah has taken in, though that may be too kind of a way to put it.  She holds no anger towards these women, many of whom hail from parents or husbands that raised hands to them.  But Delilah, who paints Emily in hues of purple, who calls magic to her and basks in it, is something else.

The knowledge that Delilah plans to inhabit Emily’s body reawakens the rage that the Empress has forgotten.  Rather than go to Delilah, she pulls Delilah to her, violently yanking her into the world of stillness.  The Empress has not spoken in so long, but she thinks she might find the words now.

Delilah’s eyes widen when they land on the Empress.  Her mouth moves soundlessly, and then contorts into a sneer.  “Oh, this is _poetic_.  I suppose now you’ll have to watch as I take away what you love most, won’t you dear sister?”

“I don’t have to watch anything,” the Empress replies.  “You’re going to stop.”

Delilah throws back her head and laughs.  She is fearless in the face of her sister, bitter and hateful to the very end.  The Empress studies her facial features, and memories that are her own (for once) surface, of that same face but with a kind smile, or laughing happily.  It is too much, and the regret is back.

“You will stop,” the Empress repeats.  She can feel the magic, like it’s an extension of herself, in Delilah’s bones.  It’s mapped across her body, embedding itself in tendons and joints, channeled through the black mark on her hand.  It’s almost too easy to reach in, find the places where it’s anchored to Delilah, and rip it out.

Delilah’s laughter turns to screams.

* * *

 

“How?” Corvo asks hoarsely.

His voice is half-destroyed.  His face is ashen, and though his clothes cover them, the Empress can still see the map of scars on his body.  She can feel them, too.  He would look like a walking corpse, were it not for the confused look on his face, that of a man desperately trying to understand.

“I don’t know,” the Empress answers.  She has never felt more helpless than she does in this moment, unable to even answer Corvo’s questions.  “I don’t remember dying.  Just pain, and Daud, and then this... everything at once, too much and not enough.  I see you.  I see Emily.  I see Hiram Burrows, in the tower where he rots.  The same way Dunwall is rotting.”

He mouths that word again, the word that she can’t understand.  He takes a step forward, and he reaches up, caressing her cheek.  She leans into it, feeling the touch but not the warmth, as always.  

She’s pulled him here, in his dreams.  It’s easier than walking in the real world; feels like there’s some semblance of privacy.  

“I think,” she continues, “that I’m like the Outsider, now.”

Corvo scowls.  “I’m not calling you that.”

“Corvo, my love,” she says, shaking her head.  “What else will you call me?”

He says it again - that thing that she can never hear - and looks confused when she shakes her head.  The Empress doesn’t know what it is he says, and she doesn’t know how to tell him that.  Instead, she wishes that there was a way to help him.  These ‘loyalists’ dream of power and control, not freedom, and what they have in store for Corvo is not something he will easily be able to overcome.

She remembers Delilah, remembers taking the magic from her.  She focuses on Corvo’s left hand, hoping to do the opposite, feeling the magic start there.  She writes it into his skeleton, aware that it hurts, wishing that it doesn’t.  Corvo is thinking that it is burning him, from the inside, but when it’s over he feels stronger.  Better.

Corvo stares wordlessly at his hand, which is marked with some black mark that she doesn’t know.  

“I have to keep you safe,” the Empress says, not sure what other explanation exists.  “I... this is all I can do.”

Corvo smiles at her, with all the love in his heart, and says, “This is enough.”

* * *

 

The Whalers are an odd little society all on their own, and Daud is the strangest of them all.

The Empress only watches them once, and after observing a very rousing game of dice, she finds the man who killed her.  The man who currently swims in regret, who is all but drowning in it, staring at his future plans.  He wishes to retire, move out to the countryside.  He is done killing for coin, and she finds herself both bitterly amused and furious that her death is the reason for it.

‘None like her’ rings through his head so many times that she considers leaving just so she doesn’t have to hear it anymore (she is always hearing it, hearing everything).  She stays, however.  She thinks that, since she mentioned his name, Corvo will come looking for him at some point.  She has to protect Corvo.  She has to do something.

The Empress doesn’t pull him to the Void.  She goes to him, instead, letting the Void overlap with the real world as she appears in his study.  Daud jumps so badly that he almost stumbles, pure shock on his face.  

She knows that he is not responsible for her imprisonment, only her death.  She still finds it hard to be remorseful for frightening him.

“Daud,” she says.

“Hello Empress,” he rasps, recovering himself quickly.  “Enjoying godhood?”

“Godhood implies some measure of power,” the Empress says.  “I can give people power.  I cannot choose what they do with it.  I watch as the entirety of the Isles suffers, and I cannot lift a finger to truly help them.”

Daud laughs.  “Why am I not surprised that _that_ , of all things, bothers you?”

“I could take your magic away,” the Empress tells him.

Daud’s eyes narrow.  “Why don’t you?”

“Because I think you may be the one person whose decisions I can influence right now,” she answers.  “Soon, Corvo Attano will come looking for you.  He will find a way to get through your Whalers and confront you, if what he’s done already is any indication.  He may try to kill you, or he may not.  I don’t know.”

“And?  What do you want _me_ to do?”

The Empress smiles coldly.  “Let him.”

* * *

 

“It’s almost over,” Corvo whispers.  “It’s almost over.”

It’s become his mantra, something that the Empress whispers to herself when everything is... too much.  Sometimes, when she’s able to bring him to her or if she goes to him, they whisper it to one another, their way of trying not to think about what will happen afterward.

Word has begun to spread, across the Isles: the Outsider is no more, and the dead Empress is walking the Void.  There are already portraits of her with her eyes filmed over with black, her face lacking any human expression.  The Abbey has begun to denounce her.  Teague Martin is aware of Corvo’s covered hand, as well as the rumors surrounding him and the Empress, and he wonders.

She is following Corvo as he ascends the lighthouse, watching his limbs tremble with effort.  He’s still not completely recovered from the poisoning, from confronting Daud.  She knows that she could make herself known to everyone who opposes him, could appear by his side, but she also knows that it would mean a death sentence.

The Empress does not need to, anyway.  Even as Corvo enters the elevator, Martin and Pendleton are choking on their deaths.  Havelock is pacing, half-mad.  Emily is safe, locked away in another room.

Even so, the Empress does not leave Corvo’s side until he and Emily are embracing, clinging tightly to one another, both with tears falling down their cheeks.

She appears very briefly over Emily’s shoulder, trying to stretch her mouth into an expression that is unfamiliar, and Corvo sends her a watery smile back.

* * *

 

One week later, with the calamities in her head somewhat dying down, the Empress appears in front of Emily a second time.

“Emily,” she whispers.

And Emily, eyes shining, turns to look at her and whispers back, “Mother.”

_Though wise men at their end know dark is right,_  
_Because their words had forked no lightning they_  
_Do not go gentle into that good night._

-Dylan Thomas

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to talk to me about Dishonored, hit me up on my [tumblr](https://darknessfactor.tumblr.com)!


End file.
